Dessert Pizza – Gorgonzola, Grilled Pear and Fig Jam

Ok i’ll be honest from the start… I only chose the title “dessert pizza” to get your attention… This pizza actually is an allrounder! You could try it as appetizer, main course or: Why not? Breakfast. It’s just too delicious and I’m not even a fan of strong cheese.

A few weeks ago my wife surprised me with a citytrip to “Amsterdam”. A superb birthday present! Thanks again my dear. We had an awesome time together. I think it was our first real foodie trip. Mostly we tend to walk and go for the touristic and shopping areas. This time we asked around where we could find some interesting food shops. Our goal: good food, coffee and chocolat. My extra goal: dinner at “The Rough Kitchen“. The BBQ joint at the “Foodhallen”. The concept was created by “Jord Althuizen” (Splatemokey Goodness BBQ team) and culinary journalist “Marcus Polman”. Pitmaster at service that day was captain “Jasper Meulenbeld”. He delivered a great job. Actually the whole trip to Amsterdam was very inspiring. Even placed we just walked by.

Dessert pizza topped with Gorgonzola and grilled pear.

The actual inspiration for this pizza came from the awesome looking pizza venue “Pink Flamingo”. They serve some creative pizza. Unfortunately we did not have the time to taste them but we’ll be back! One of the pizza’s appears to be with gorgonzola and dried figs. We combined the fig and gorgonzola idea with grilled pear and Arugula. Instead of dried figs my wife came with the idea to use fig jam that urgently needed to be eaten. Did I tell you before she has some great ideas? I guess. But I think she won’t be sad to hear it again ;).

We made a second pizza with beetroot that will be featured in a few week. I want to make it again to further enhance the taste. It looked delicious. Those interested might want to take a look at my instagram page to find out. Over there you’ll see some photography experiments I’ve tried. I’m working hard on these skills lately but I prefer honest shots and warm food above the images. That’s why it often goes “wrong” when it needs to go fast.

For the dough I used my own dough recipe I posted earlier. I had some trouble to fire up my big Kamado so it took me longer than usual to prepare the pizza’s. But in the end it all worked well. Next time I’ll remove my platesetter and hope the temperature will raise faster (but risk a black bottom). Otherwise I’ll go back to the smaller one I’m comfortable with. If I may give you an advice on Kamado’s bigger ain’t always better (unless it’s low and slow time and you have many eaters). Or am I doing something wrong with the big dude?

1. Prepare your dough. If you use storebought pizza dough you can skip this step ;).

2. While the dough is rising, fire up your Q for direct cooking at high temperature (aim for as high as possible)

3. Grill slices of pear until they get a golden brown searing.

4. Roll out pizza dough or punch it down with your hand. Don't go to thin since this pizza can use some crust.

5. Spread a base of fig jam on the dough and top with grilled pear and gorgonzola.

6. Put the pizza stone in your BBQ and place the pizza on it.

7. The higher your temperature the faster your pizza will be ready. If you manage to get near 300°C /570°F your pizza will need +/- 3-4 minutes. At about 200°C/400°F it will take about 8-10 minutes. Look closely, you don't want to burn the crust!

8. When ready remove the pizza from the BBQ and top with fresh Arugula (for desert skip the arugula.